by Kent Hall

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31 Dec 2014

Omnivore Books on Food, in San Francisco, is a cookbook lover’s delight. The shelves are stocked with cookbooks new and old—in fact, many of its volumes are rare and collectible. So when I wanted to get a sense of what makes a great cookbook, I asked owner Celia Sack. “A great cookbook tells you why you’re doing what you’re doing in the kitchen, and becomes...

by Milena Canizares

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30 Dec 2014

Each decade sees books of a certain genre spring to the top. The 1980s were chock-full of pop psychology. The ’90s saw an obsession with fantastical novels a la Harry Potter. And millennial reading seems to have taken a turn towards nonfiction social psychology books with a focus on how our thoughts affect our work, our relationships, and absolutely everything in our lives. Are our...

by Milena Canizares

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19 Dec 2014

The world of travel writing has changed over the last few decades—as have the travel tendencies of the general public. In the past, travel was an expensive and prized experience. Trips were few and far between, and were most certainly not available to all. Now that travel is super accessible—and relatively affordable—the majority of us are seeing the world in one way or another each...

by Kent Hall

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18 Dec 2014

There are two kinds of editing in this world: copy editing and developmental editing (the kind that most people don’t talk about). For the copy editor, the mechanics of punctuation, grammar, and spelling are what matter—and any writer worth their salt knows those are key to a final draft. For the developmental editor, however, it’s the mechanics of the book as a whole that matter....

by Milena Canizares

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12 Dec 2014

Writers spend so much of their time hunched over their desks ferociously typing. But, they spend almost equal amounts of time reading. A good book can transport you to another place. It can educate you about other people and cultures. And it can inspire you to pen your next great masterpiece. We asked two self-published authors, Amy Edelman and Orna Ross, to share their favorite...

by Kent Hall

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12 Dec 2014

A few weeks back, at the Toronto International Book Fair, I met Louise Courey Nadeau, author ofMagelica’s Voyage, a self-published early reader book. Nadeau is a smart, independent, and creative authorpreneur. In other words, she does more than write and sell books, she creates a brand. She gave me a little Magelica’s Voyage gift set, which includes a book and a necklace, that she sells...

by Milena Canizares

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03 Dec 2014

The idea of publishing in installments is nothing new. In fact, Charles Dickens’ The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is one of the, if not the, first serial novel to be published and consumed in smaller bits. In 2011, Hugh Howey published the opening chapters of Woolas ebook novellas, and subsequently released a total of five ebooks that make up the novel in its...

by Kent Hall

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03 Dec 2014

I recently gave a talk at Inspire! International Book Fair on the differences between offset printing and print on demand. I’d assumed it’d be a sparsely attended talk. After all, how many people even know what offset printing is? But, as it turns out, over the three days I gave this talk, I had an audience with rapt attention. Some of those present were authors...

by Contributing Author

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21 Nov 2014

You say you’ve just self-published a book? Congratulations! All your hard work has finally paid off and now your content is available in print (and ebook too, right?). That’s fantastic. Be proud of yourself. Throw a party. Now stop celebrating and get back to work. If your goal in writing that book was just to see your name in print, or to get a story...

by Kent Hall

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21 Nov 2014

While the “gift book” isn’t exactly a genre, we all pretty much know what a gift book is—at least by sight, if not definition. The gift book pops up in the holiday season generally, often at specialty stores and boutiques. It’s a book you buy because you know it’ll interest the receiver, but there’s a good chance they don’t already have it. It’s a luxury...